The St. Petersburg Trio is not the Nairobi Three (6 cents)

Do you remember Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Three (speaking of politically correct!)?

Well, the St. Petersburg Trio is very different. It is composed of three members of the Washington Balalaika Society (maybe the only three?, who are each graduates of the Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory. They are all terrific musicians, and the best is probably Svetlana Nikonova, who plays the domra. The domra is a small mandolin, with only three strings, and she gets an extraordinary tone from it, both in quality and volume. Her two partners of Vladimar Zakharevitch, who plays the bayan, a Russian accordian like instruments, with buttons on both sides and no keyboard, and Andrey Saveliev, who plays the very large, and very bass balalaika k-bass. They played today at the Church of the Epiphany.

Their program had two parts: classical and folk. Every single song was familiar.

It must be said that it became apparent why Strauss, Mozart, Bach and Brahms did not write for a trio comprised of a domra, a bayan and a balalaika k-bass. But, considering what they were playing, they sure made the most of it. The folk songs (Russian and gypsy) were equally well performed.

The concert ran over its allotted 50 minutes, and nobody left.